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Truck Tonnage Increases in January

The American Trucking Associations’ advanced seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 2.9 percent in January after jumping 2.4 percent in December. Tonnage has surged at least 2.4 percent every month since November, gaining a total of 9.1 percent over that period. Seasonally adjusted data takes into account items such as weather, increased factory production for certain times of the year, harvests and back-to-school sales.

While addressing attendees at The NATSO Show, ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello suggested truckstop and travel plaza operators look at non-seasonally adjusted figures. “If I were you and I wanted to benchmark what my business was doing on a month-to-month basis, I would look at the trucking industry’s miles and the non-seasonally adjusted numbers,” he said during his keynote address at the show.

The not seasonally adjusted index, which represents the change in tonnage actually hauled by the fleets before any seasonal adjustment, equaled 122.4 in January, which was 10.7 percent above the previous month.

Photo Credit: Aki/bigstock.com

This article originally ran inNATSO News Weekly(NNW), NATSO's member only weekly electronic newsletter. NNW is packed with the latest updates on government and business issues affecting the truckstop and travel plaza industry.